China in a nut shell!

So in China, we visited many temples, villages, markets and tried many things that I couldn't even imagine myself doing. I ate many things that I couldn't even imagine eating (sea horse, scorpion, ox tongue, pigeon, mutton, and god knows what 'meat and vegetables' is equivalent to...). I saw a lot of things that would be completely not be acceptable or would be incredibly unusual here in the states like crowds of bikers everywhere you went, people selling things everywhere you go, people throwing their children at you asking you to take a picture with them like you were a celebrity, people cutting hair on the side of the street (which usually would not be too unusual but they would take the hair and stuff it into the drains from underpasses and well everywhere actually. We spent time at the police station trying to convince them that we were not terrorists invading their country (apparently you are suppose to register with the government when you get there... and apparently there was a sign on our door telling us that... but we don't read Chinese so you can imagine how that went...)

Another thing that was really cool was during the first few weeks we were there the Euro Cup was going on... and granted we were in Asia... there were many European people there so we went to this restaurant with some people we met and watched the Sweden vs. Spain game. It was fun because EVERYONE was decked out in jerseys and colors (well everyone but us) and the group we joined was all rooting for Sweden. They looked at us expecting us to choose sides but assumed we were going to take their side but we all left and confessed we were all for Spain! ha ha.

For the 4th of July some of us girls stayed in Beijing and decided to go to The Hard Rock Cafe! It was a lot of fun and we decked out in red, white and blue and I don't think anyone knew what we were celebrating which was different for me considering I have spent every 4th of July at my cabin for as long as I can remember. We decked ourselves out in red, white and blue before camp it was fun because a lot of the kids that weren't American were asking us what we were celebrating and we got to explain to them what the 4th of July was.

And although there are many wonderful things to do in Beijing... I have to say that one of my favorite memories was a day that I took to myself and ventured out. I woke up early one morning and went to the bike rental place where we always rented our bikes and picked one up. I had a map and picked out all of the places I wanted to see and just took off. I probably road over 30 miles that day but it was an absolutely beautiful day which was completely out of the norm considering I probably saw a total of three sunny days with no clouds. Usually I was fighting to breath in all of the smog. Anyways this day was breath taking and I started out riding in a complete circle around the city checking every book store possible looking for the book New Moon (the second book in the Twilight series) and I probably look at about 6 book stores and every single one had the first book and the third but for some reason all of the stores were sold out of the second one. So I gave up and moved on...
I had missed the trip to see the big pagoda at Bahi Park and so I found that on my map and went to check it out. It was so beautiful and the temples were just glistening in the sun light. The park was a big U shape river with buildings and parks on the outside an the big pagoda was in the center. I went and strolled around enjoying the locals that were playing instruments and dancing in one of the parks and viewed some of the temples and other buildings around the outside. Then I got on a little boat that crossed the river and hiked up the stairs (it always seems that in Asia you have to wake up hundreds if not thousands of stairs to get to your destination) and was able to view the pagoda. The best part was that if you paid an extra 3 Kwai (like 45 cents) you could go to the top of a tower parallel to the pagoda and you could view the whole city. It was absolutely gorgeous!

Now the part you have all been waiting for... The Olympics...
Being in Beijing leading up the the games was an adventure in itself. We made daily trips to the markets and when it got closer to the games, we noticed that as well as the increase in tourists that were coming into the city, the markets tried to be sneaky and bumped up their prices and for a pair of shoes that you could have gotten for 50 Kwai (eeh like $7) you could not get for any less than 100 Kwai! It was horrible and even with the vendors that we went to all the time (the people that knew who we were) wouldn't even hook us up!
The city was expanding and new buildings were shooting up everywhere as well as signs, paintings, souvineers and anything you could imagine. The city was trying to clean up its streets and skys believe it or not. They were actually shooting chemicals up into the sky to force it to rain, which in turn would apparently clear up some of the smog. In reality it simply created thunder storms, lightning and acid rain! It was insane! We had some of the worst storms and the thing was, no one was scared at all. I was terrified to be outside with lightning but no one seemed to be the least bit phased at the sight of it. It would literally start dumping rain, and being from Seattle... I have never seen anything like it before. I am assuming our random sunny days were the result of these storms and it did clear up the sky but it would only last for one day max. All of the chemicals and the Chinese trying to play god actually backfired and the day of the first Olympic event was one of the worst day I saw while I was there.
We were able to have the Friday of opening ceremony off work but we were scheduled to fly out the next morning and had to be at the airport at 5, so we were not able to actually attend any of the games. For opening ceremony we were able to go to The Place (a mall) and stood in line for two hours trying to get tickets to attend this Coca Cola sponsored event with huge screens showing the ceremony. We brought face paint and were painting our faces as well as the locals faces getting ready for the event. After we got the tickets we had to hand out around there for a few hours and being that we had the coolest sun glasses on the face of the planet, we were getting interviews after interviews by people from all over the world including two from Georgia and Minnesota.
So we watched opening ceremony and it was a blast and eventually met up with our bosses at this bar up town which was incredibly expensive and only sold one thing. Grey Goose at about 1400 Kwai a bottle ($200). So needless to say we felt extremely out of place in our work out shorts, college t-shirts and face paint all over.
Even though we were not able to attend the actual games, we were able to experience the atmosphere, represent the states and pretend to be some sort of Olympic athletes (most of the time we were Olympic speed walkers... yah don't ask). The two guys that I was with this summer stayed and were able to attend some of the games and so we got to hear about the different events.

Overall I think that this trip was one of a kind, I would do it again in a heartbeat, although I would go back to South Korea over Beijing any day... but thats a whole different story. I am happy to say that I climbed the Great Wall and saw the Beijing Olympics but really, I have so many more memories that are just as amazing as they were.

I am not planning on going out this summer, I decided that I want to be able to be at home for a summer and spend some time with my new favorite little person in the world, spend some time with my family and to be able to spend some time with Will and Teej before my two people that keep me sane when the world is crazy move back to Pullman without me!! and last but not least... I have to get a real job. HA!

Beijing 2008 Recap

So I have had quite a few people asking me about my trip since I have been back in the states and towards the end of my trip I was extremely busy with both finishing up our days at camp, trying to fit in every last trip we wanted to make and finally the goodbyes that we had to say to both our kids... my favorite little person in the world who still to this day I think of all the time.. and my staff who I am proud to say I still keep in contact with most of them. I currently am starting up the training sessions for Camp Adventure and working with Brady to try to make this year as successful as all of the previous. We didn't have as many people come out this year as we have had in the past but we decided that that was ok due to the economy and the fact that we really did pick up some really qualified students... AND WSU WON THE RECRUITMENT TALLY over UofI so that was a really great thing meaning we will not have to travel to Idaho for training days!!

Well anyways my point of typing up this new blog entry was to recap and reflect on my trip, I realized that I missed a lot of important parts of my trip because usually when I was writing I was reflecting on my weekend or camp activities but I missed a lot of important parts not to mention the OLYMPICS! Which were absolutely amazing!

So here is a short recap.
I left for Beijing China on June 9, 2008. I got to departure with one of my close guy friends from WSU, Brady, and we flew from Seattle directly to Tokyo, Japan where we HAAAAD to track down this little bar that Brady had visited in the airport the previous year... It was not that great but off we were to change into our camp uniforms, which we were suppose to be wearing the entire trip, and then to our gate where we met our staff.

So the first couple weeks went by pretty fast and we grew to become really close with our fellow camp counselors and took on the task of learning some chinese which soon after we gave up due to the fact that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to pick up on... or at least that is what it felt like. We decided to stick to our basic words such as Ni Hao (Hello), Sei Shen (Thank You), Lousher (Teacher, a much easier way to explain why we were in there than a camp counselor), Dwe (Yes), and our soon to be favorite word to use... Boo Yao (NO!!).

So in short, we saw so many things while we were there and we were contracted through the US embassy which gave us access to a safe base if something were to go wrong, but even better it gave us Danielle who became our new best friend. Danielle worked for the Embassy and she had been living in China for quite a long time which made her very fluent in speaking Chinese as well as knowing where to go, who to believe, and the ins and outs to their culture... including the shopping tips for the markets. Without her I am positive my parents would have killed me because I would have been calling home for money every week!

Danielle hooked us up with absolutely amazing adventures such as Spa trips, yoga retreats, markets to visit and last but not least our trip to the Great Wall! That was by far my favorite and I have talked about most of these adventures previously so I will not make you read about them again! Ooh and she gave us probably the coolest present EVER! Our Olympic sunglasses which to this day I still wear and Teej constantly makes fun of me and is embarrassed to be seen with me wearing them!

I would like to recap on my camp experience because I feel like a lot of what I have written about previously has been about my travels when really one of my favorite things about China were the kids I worked with. They changed my life and I can only hope that I had half the impact on them as they had on me. Not to say all of my kids were angels, in fact I had my moments with all of them but to see that I could impact a set of twins, Marvin and Sedric, who upon arrival had no intent of talking, participating or listening (in fact they wanted nothing but their mommy the first couple weeks). They were my best friends by the end of the summer and it was amazing how the kids that you hope don't return the next week, are always there and in the end they are really the heart break that you are leaving behind with tears in their eyes. I will never forget those little boys from Singapore...

And of course there was my baby Quinn who brought tears to my eyes on his last day. We have a tradition at camp that at the end of the day we have a closing period where we calm the kids down before they return to their parents. During this period we have a song called Lean On Me (not the version everyone knows but a slower version) where we learn the sign language in training and we teach it to the kids and we play it during closing. Well anyways, Quinn was only 5 I believe but every time we would do the signs to it, he would find me and mimic my moves and have the brightest smile on his face. He actually would sign the whole song even when most of the kids would be talking and not paying attention and he would have his little eyes on me.

And not to ramble on but there was one more little girl, Eliena. She was a little Chinese girl who DID NOT want to speak English in the least bit. She was very fluent and knew exactly what we were saying when we would talk to her but she did not want to listen or talk back. Another thing she DID NOT like was swimming which was something we did every day. So one of the weeks I was her group leader and I decided that she was going to swim and I was going to convince her that it was the coolest thing in the world. So I put a life jacket on (because all of the 4 and 5 year olds pretty much had to wear them) and got it and after about 20 minutes of trying to convince her it was the coolest thing in the world, she finally got up the guts to get in. After that she used to come up to me before swimming whenever I would be swimming with her and grab my hand and smile.

So these four kids were definately my impact children and I will never forget them, the memories they gave me or the tears they brought to my eyes when I had to say goodbye to them.

ANYWAYS!! I have to go take a test and stop procrastinating... but I will continue when I get back.